You never know, with coastal cities. Sometimes, the beach locals rave about is small and dirty, sometimes you end up in a tiny, overpriced town along with hordes of tourists, sometimes port cities are run down and dodgy.

Mendoza and I are not compatible. If the Argentinian city was a person, I’d probably have one of these quick, embarrassing chats with him, where I’d resort to overused lines, like “look, it’s not you, it’s me,” “you’re nice, but…” and “we can still be friends, right?”

Why Mendoza? Because it’s across the country, on the east side of the Andes, close to Chile. Because I found a cheap hotel. Because I found a great plane ticket that saves me a 1,000-kilometre bus trip across the country.

After a few days in Argentina’s capital, I travelled to Uruguay, stayed in Montevideo, took a day trip to Punta del Este and now I’m back in Buenos Aires. So, what did I learn during these first 10 days of solo travel?

If Buenos Aires is an old, elegant lady who never steps out without wearing her fancier clothes and applying bright-red lipstick, Montevideo is the grungy little sister with messy hair, a slogan tee, jeans with holes and not a care in the world.

Montevideo has the world’s longest Carnival, starting in January through early March. So basically, performers—given the size of Uruguay, I’m willing to bet that almost every resident participated once to some extent

Missions? I have plenty, come to think of it. Travelling is a bit like a real-life egg hunt. You spend your time looking for things or trying to make sense of your environment using clues, and then you move on to the next challenge to find a bigger chocolate egg.